Darby was closer to the truth than most would like to admit. People insist that second-hand smoke is bad for you (and it probably is in my opinion), but the scientific evidence is scant. There was a study years ago that even said second-hand smoke had negligible effects (and this fact was even featured in Penn & Teller's show "Bulls**t), although I believe that study has been discredited. There has not been a thorough enough examination in the scientific literature, though, to make a certain scientific statement either way.

I'd still like to see it banned in as many public places as possible, though; if not for the health reasons, then just because I don't want to smell it and I don't think I should have to.

Passive smoking refers to the smoke that non-smokers are breathing in from active smokers. Passive smoking means that the passive smokers, or non-smokers, are breathing in the smoke either from the burning end of the active smoker's cigarette or the smoke expelled by the active smoker. Passive smoking is also called involuntary or secondhand smoking.

Passive smoking can lead to very serious health problems such as respiratory diseases, heart disease and lung cancer. Cigarette smoke has more than 400 chemicals in it, and cigarette smoking creates air pollution in the form of passive smoking. Passive smoking is considered a preventable cause of death which has killed thousands of people exposed to cigarette smoke in homes, workplaces and/or public places.

Children are often passive smokers and receive health injuries that they would not have had if their parents did not smoke. Even a small amount of secondhand smoke can affect babies, children and others. When active smokers smoke in the home, but try to smoke near an open window, some smoke still remains in the home. Children who end up being passive smokers have been shown to have an increased risk of getting cancer later in life as well as asthma and respiratory infections.

@Makyhg You just made a lot of statements. Please supply the necessary literature to support those statements.

I agree with you that second-hand smoke is probably bad and probably does cause many of the problems that you claim it does, but in science you can not just make statements that "sound about right". You need to prove those statements with facts and evidence.

Yes it is very dangerous!If you can smell the smoke, it is damaging you.It is almost as bad as first hand smoke! Yes, it can give you lung cancer. It can also give you heart disease and other life threatening illnesses. Passive smoking also increases the chance of heart attack. Their smoke will also be absorbed into your clothes and hair. So you will constantly smell like a ash tray and it will constantly be damaging you.

Best advice; don't be near them when they smoke! Remember, if you can smell the smoke it is causing damage to your body

Uh these people don’t really know what they are talking about:Even if you and your friends are outside, you are still breathing their smoke and that IS causing damage to your body.

There are at least 69 chemicals in second hand smoke that cause cancer!Approx 50000 people die each year from second hand smoke.So YES it is damaging you even though you are outside!

Scarlett1 wrote:It is almost as bad as first hand smoke! Yes, it can give you lung cancer. It can also give you heart disease and other life threatening illnesses. Passive smoking also increases the chance of heart attack.

Please see my previous post about supporting your assertions with necessary evidence and statistics. I agree that second hand smoke is probably bad for you. But 'probably' is not a scientific statement, it's a guess (although probably an educated guess).

Scarlett1 wrote:There are at least 69 chemicals in second hand smoke that cause cancer!Approx 50000 people die each year from second hand smoke.

Hard statistics! I'd like to see where these came from though; without a source, I don't know how accurate these statistics are or how they were determined. Statistics mean nothing if the method used to obtain them is faulty. Furthermore, the presence of chemicals that cause cancer does not mean that they do cause cancer; again, more information is needed. Many things contain "carcinogens", but in such low doses that it has a null effect. They probably are in dangerous quantities, but I'd like to see the numbers on that.

I recently watched BBC panorama programme first broadcast on 13th April 2010 entitled "Spoilt Rotten". This was a documentary following the lives of doctors and children being treated in a major UK hospital, treatments were for according to the program "entirely preventable conditions". Young obese children, young children with tooth decay etc. The point of the program was to show a broken society wasting money on treating preventable diseases.I would like to start a discussion about the program as I noted that during the program children with Glue Ear were shown. The ENT nurse was shown asking the parents if they smoked and the implication from the program and the nurse was that the glue ear experienced by their child was directly caused by passive smoking and therefore preventable hearing loss. The nurse even went as far as to say that the parents smoking outside the house would not improve the matter as by having smoke on their clothing near to the children causes glue ear. The ENT nurse also said she could "see the effect on ear canals" where children had been around smoking, some kind of yellowing of the hairs in the canal apparently. Anyone care to comment on this?I recently reminded myself of some of the evidence of passive smoking and glue ear, one study actually found passive smoking was a significant protective factor against recurrent glue ear! In general the evidence about passive tobacco smoking appears to be mixed. See the recently published review paper: Epidemiology, natural history, and riskfactors: Panel report from the Ninth International Research Conference on Otitis MediaDaly etl al. 2010It does seem common sense to not smoke around children, but I was little concerned about the way the program seemed to imply glue ear was entirely caused by passive smoking (in these children) and so an avoidable disease.Do we really think there is currently strong evidence that passive smoking is a significant risk factor for glue ear. Should ENT Nurses effectively bully individuals to stop smoking appearing to state with certainty that the parents smoking directly caused their Child's glue ear? It would be great to have a debate, if anyone else has any other evidence would be great to share it as I did not conduct an extensive literature review and I am not a glue ear expert. It could be there is strong evidence. However, I am still concerned that the smokers seemed to be told that their child's glue ear was definitively caused by their 2nd hand smoke.

Passive or second hand smoke is as much a political as medical issue. This is demonstrated most clearly in the caim that there is no safe llevel - a claim that flies in the face of toxicology and Paracelsus - "the poison is in the dose."The confident claims of major risk offered here are not from scientists but folks impressed by the political aspects.Of curse there are carcinogens from smoke - mere chemical presence of a carcinogen does not mean major health risk.